The final local results of Tuesday’s election will be a long time coming. The Elections Office is required by law to stay on Election Night until all of the precinct ballots are tallied, but that represents only the ballots that are filled out at polling places. The ballots voters got in the mail were printed by the Runbeck Company and don’t work well in the scanning machines made by Hart Intercivic. Nevada County is the only other place using that combination, and they’re having the same problem. The only solution is for election workers to duplicate the ballots. They are then manually triple-checked by multiple election workers before they’re placed back in with the other ballots for normal scanning.
There’s a presence in the Elections Office that’s causing a lot of stress to some of the employees as they go about the busy work of counting and processing ballots. Election observers are a relatively new phenomenon in the modern voting process. They can be seen at polling places, as well as in the election headquarters, and they’re governed by a very specific set of guidelines. In the past few elections some citizens have gotten too aggressive and even confrontational with staff members, to the point of making them fear for their safety. At least ten staff members have quit in recent months.